Endling
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025
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- 12,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
* LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 *
* LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2026 *
* WINNER OF THE ATWOOD GIBSON WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE *
* A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, IRISH TIMES, BBC, WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY *
An unforgettable debut novel about the journey of three women and one extremely endangered snail through contemporary Ukraine
'A fierce and funny road-trip novel' GUARDIAN, the 50 hottest books to read right now
'Inventive and playful' SUNDAY TIMES
'A stunning debut' OBSERVER
'I was gripped . . . Brilliant' DAILY MAIL
'A thrilling ride' FINANCIAL TIMES
'A bold, brilliant, original, funny and devastating novel' KATE MCLOUGHLIN, TLS
'Brilliant and heart-stopping' LOS ANGELES TIMES
'Startling and ambitious' NEW YORK TIMES
'Animated by dark humor and cool fury' NEW YORKER
'Dexterous and formally inventive' MARCEL THEROUX, GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country's forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to settle down and start a family of her own. What they don't know: Yeva already dates plenty of men-not for love, but to fund her work-entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they'll find docile brides untainted by feminism.
Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.
So begins a journey of a lifetime across a country on the brink of war: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species.
* LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE *
* FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARDS *
'Fantastic . . . I love works that are smarter than I am and this is one' PERCIVAL EVERETT, author of Booker-shortlisted JAMES
'Funny and smart, full of science, longing and adventure . . . This is essential reading' ANN PATCHETT, bestselling author of TOM LAKE
'Heartbreaking, hilarious, profound, and vital' LARA PRESCOTT, bestselling author of THE SECRETS WE KEEP
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Reva's astonishing metafictional tale (after Good Citizens Need Not Fear), a Ukrainian Canadian writer named Maria Reva attempts to write a novel about Ukraine's mail-order bride industry on the eve of the Russian invasion. The novel's first part consists of Reva's novel in progress featuring Yeva, a snail conservationist working to save a species on the brink of extinction by traveling around the country in her RV turned lab to find specimens for breeding. To pay for her equipment, she joins guided romance tours and goes on dates with Western men looking for a pliable Ukrainian bride. Meanwhile, sisters Nastia and Sol strive to take the bridal industry down. After Nastia borrows Yeva's RV with a plan to kidnap 12 of the bachelors, Russia invades and Reva's manuscript grinds to a halt. Reva emerges as a character in the second part, reeling from the bombings and worrying about her grandfather, who still resides in occupied Kherson, as she watches the news from Vancouver. She disappoints her agent with the news that she's quit the novel ("I was writing about a so-called invasion of Western bachelors to Ukraine, and then an actual invasion happened.... To continue now seems unforgivable"). Reva then writes a grant proposal to travel in Ukraine for research on a "postnovel" about her birth country in flux. When she returns in the final section to her three revolutionary anti-brides, their adventure brilliantly dovetails with Reva's literary experiment and wartime reckoning. This inspired and urgent novel is bound to make a major splash.
